A few weeks ago, I started telling people that I’m planning to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. When they ask why I’d possibly want to leave New York in its prime season - between April and September - to hike 2650 miles from Mexico to Canada, it takes me a while before I’m able to get to the answer: “I was inspired by Wild.”
One of the reasons I fumble the answer is because “I was inspired by Wild” is probably the most stereotypical reason for hiking the PCT. Published in 2012 and adapted to an Oscar-nominated movie in 2014, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir drove an exponential rise in popularity for both through-hiking and the PCT.
When I first picked up Wild in September of 2015, I was a few months past my 1-year at Amazon. The NYT had just published a damning piece criticizing Amazon’s corporate culture, which I was defending halfheartedly - ensconced in the bubble of the San Francisco office, which provided free soda in order to keep up with the more lavish tech culture of Silicon Valley, I certainly had never seen anyone cry at their desks. It wasn’t that much later when I cried (although blessedly it was while I was working overtime on a weekend and therefore in the privacy of my apartment, rather than at my middle-of-the-open-floorplan desk). I learned in short order that I could loathe work. For the first time in the 3 years since I had graduated college, brambles appeared along what I had thought would be a smooth sailing trail through adulthood.
Strayed arrived at the southern end of the PCT lost and naive, carrying a pack weighing half her body weight and wearing brand new boots. She left having shorn both her literal and emotional baggage. It emblazoned in me this vision of the PCT as a place of rebirth, where I could go and leave with some undiscovered part of myself repaired. I wrote hike the PCT on a bookmark I had written all of my life goals on, nestled in between buy a house and become Director level at work, and tucked it into my planner.
Late in 2015, I decided to leave Amazon. I interviewed for a handful of companies and received a handful of offers. In early 2016, I donned a fresh pair of rose-tinted glasses and embarked on a 7-year stint at Airbnb, where I would experience the turbulence of working for a place whose mission you wholeheartedly dedicate yourself to, only to see it slowly crumbling under the pressures of profitability and growth. I got engaged, then broke off the engagement; entered situationships, then left them. My trail splintered off from the marked path that would take me to all the summits I thought I should climb: becoming recognized in my field, owning a 3 bedroom house, and raising 2.5 well adjusted kids. I ventured tentatively into the underbrush. All through this, the PCT stood perpetually amongst the skyline of so many other summits, one whose splendor lit a fire in me whenever it peeked through the trees, but which I couldn’t decide on moving towards or leaving behind.
I signed up for a guided 5-day backpacking trip to West Virginia on a friend’s recommendation - he had gone on a similar trip to Escalante earlier this year, and had raved about the experience of fording rushing rivers, off-trailing through the cliffs, and cowboy camping under the stars. A few months ahead of the trip, we were asked to send an introduction of ourselves to the group. I skimmed each participant’s “hiker creds” in awe: they had hiked the Lone Star Trail, the CDT, the AT, and more. A gust stirred up, and I felt the nervous rattling of an inner storm, a reawakening of old possibilities. When the clouds dissipated, there the PCT stood.
Perhaps the idea of the PCT rooted so deeply in me when I first read Wild because I was so lost myself - I didn’t know it then, but the death bells were ringing for both my job and my relationship, the twin cores I had built my identity around. I’m no longer looking to be made whole by the PCT, like Strayed might have been when she set out. The turns I’ve taken in the 8 years since have taught me that life is a long journey of makings and unmakings, and that wholeness is not a destination that I can ever arrive at, upon which I can set down my pack and decide that my journey is done. The PCT is just a summit amongst a skyline of summits, but finally, I decide to pull out a map.
I started charting my course. I pored over previous surveys of PCT through-hikers and their trail reports; I bookmarked through-hiker guides and penned the permit dates in my calendar. The more I read the more urgency I felt, the idea free-falling through my soul in search of terminal velocity.
In 2021, wildfires ripped through California, bolstered by lack of forest maintenance during Covid, decimating forests and closing large swathes of the PCT in California. In September of 2022, similar blazes in Canada closed the northern terminus of the PCT, forcing north-bound hikers to abandon their hopes of completing the PCT. A few months later, the West Coast experienced historic levels of snowfall. In response, the PCTA ( Pacific Crest Trail Association ) announced closures along trails with high avalanche risk. Record snowpack made hiking conditions on open trails more dangerous, as atmospheric rivers dumped rain 24/7 in some areas, and snowmelt flooded rivers in others. Through-hiking the PCT has already changed irrevocably due to climate change, and many hikers echo concerns around how much longer the PCT will be relatively safe to hike.
I quit my job in May with a plan to take 2 years off before returning to the workforce. I’m 32 now and though I’m unsure if I want to have children, I can’t completely dismiss the possibility. I know older folks say that there’s all the time in the world to do the things that you love, but with the PCT, that just doesn’t seem true. My window of opportunity feels like it’s being strangled closed by how climate change will impact the PCT in 10 or 20 years, or whenever I might get my next chance, so my gut clenches and tells me I must go NOW.
It’s easier to say “I was inspired by Wild” than to convey the terror and grief I feel when thinking about what California’s wilderness might look like in 20 years. It feels stupid and selfish to say that I’m trying to beat out climate change, and joining the hoards of hikers stampeding through the PCT to do so. But I want to face the brutal exposure of the Mojave, to see meadows shimmering with wildflowers, to be made minuscule by the alpine peaks of the High Sierra. I want to huddle in my tent during the rain and wonder, why did I choose this, and when the storm breaks, I want to look across the expansive valley and marvel, I came from all the way over there. I want to pay my respects to all of the forests that burned.
In a way, I’m reclaiming the first half of my twenties. I was so afraid of getting lost that I never considered if the trail headed where I wanted to go. I kept my eyes so firmly fixed on the well-trodden path, I barely saw what I was passing. But now, I want to plunge enthusiastically into the unknown, trusting that even though some steps may slip and some will lead the wrong way, I’ll take each of them intentionally. One step at a time, my eyes wide open with awe.
My trail splintered off from the marked path that would take me to all the summits I thought I should climb: becoming recognized in my field, owning a 3 bedroom house, and raising 2.5 well adjusted kids. I ventured tentatively into the underbrush. All through this, the PCT stood perpetually amongst the skyline of so many other summits, one whose splendor lit a fire in me whenever it peeked through the trees, but which I couldn’t decide on moving towards or leaving behind.
:clap: